Hat & Headwear Definitions — hats, caps, helmets and headwear terms from Apparel Search
A trilby, or trilby hat, is a soft felt men's hat with a narrow brim and a deeply indented crown. It is traditionally made from rabbit fur felt, but may also be made of other materials such as tweed. Trilby hats are softer than homburgs and have a flexible rather than curved brim, and they are similar to fedoras but with a narrower brim.
Trilby hats are softer than Homburgs, and have a flexible rather than curved brim. They are also similar to fedoras, but with a narrower brim. The term Trilby is sometimes broadly used to refer to any similar hat, such as the pork pie hat.
Its name derives from the play based on George du Maurier's 1884 novel Trilby. A hat of this style was worn on stage during its first London production.
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The trilby is a soft felt men's hat, and softness is the first thing to understand about it. Where a stiff dress hat holds a moulded shape, the trilby is made to be handled, carried and worn without ceremony, its felt giving rather than resisting. Across the front and top runs its second defining feature: a deeply indented crown. The indentation shapes the crown inward, giving the trilby a pinched, worked silhouette quite different from a smooth, rounded crown. Below the crown sits a narrow brim. Narrow is the operative comparison, because the trilby is similar to the fedora, the other great soft felt men's hat, but with a narrower brim. Two soft felt hats of similar crown can therefore be separated at the brim: the wider-brimmed hat leans toward the fedora, the neat, narrow-brimmed hat is the trilby.
Traditionally the trilby is made from rabbit fur felt, a fine felt suited to a hat that must stay soft while keeping its indented crown. It may also be made of other materials, such as tweed, which changes the character from smooth felt to a rougher, country cloth while leaving the shape, narrow brim and indented crown, unchanged. That range of materials is worth noting when identifying the style, because a trilby is defined by form first and material second. The term trilby is also sometimes broadly used to refer to any similar hat, such as the pork pie hat, so in loose usage the name can drift; the strict definition remains the soft felt hat with the narrow brim and deeply indented crown described here.
Three soft and stiff felt hats are constantly compared, and the trilby's place among them is precise. Against the fedora, the difference is width: trilbies are similar to fedoras, but with a narrower brim. Against the homburg, the difference is stiffness: trilby hats are softer than homburgs, and have a flexible rather than curved brim. A homburg's brim is set in a fixed upward curve, part of its formal character, while a trilby's brim flexes, part of its relaxed character. Handling the hats makes the distinctions immediate. The homburg feels firm and finished, the fedora soft and wide, the trilby soft and narrow, with its deeply indented crown marking it from above as clearly as its brim marks it from the side.
Few hats take their name from the stage, but this one does. The name trilby derives from the play based on George du Maurier's novel Trilby, and a hat of this style was worn on stage during its first London production. The naming pattern is worth understanding because it explains how a literary title became a permanent hat term: a recognisable hat seen on stage in a successful production gave audiences and hatters a shared name for a shape that then entered general trade and general wear. The hat outlasted the play's fame, as hat names often do, so that trilby now stands first as the name of a soft, narrow-brimmed, indented-crown felt hat, and only second as a reference to the production that named it. When the word is used carefully, it always means the hat defined by those features, whatever it is made from.
A trilby is similar to a fedora but has a narrower brim. Its crown is deeply indented, and the hat is made of soft felt, traditionally rabbit fur felt.
Trilby hats are softer than homburgs, and they have a flexible rather than curved brim. A homburg is a stiff dress hat, while a trilby gives and flexes in the hand.
The name derives from the play based on George du Maurier's novel Trilby. A hat of this style was worn on stage during the play's first London production.